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Google and Amazon go head-to-head with new ads for smart display products

Who’s on Top? – November 5-11, 2018

Advertisers spent $1.3 billion overall on national TV commercials during the week ending November 11, an increase of 8% week-over-week. After jumping 30% last week compared to the week prior, spend on new advertising saw another increase this week of 7% to reach a total of $256 million. NFL games have been the most popular programming for airing new TV spots – this week accounting for 40% of all new national ad spending.

Creative Spotlight

Directly on the heels of Facebook’s launch of Portal, Google and Amazon went head-to-head this week with new advertising for their respective smart display devices.

Unveiled last month, the Google Home Hub is the latest product in the Google Home family, featuring a touchscreen and voice activated display that can be used for online search, YouTube, Google Photos, calendar, maps and more, as well as controlling supported home automation devices. Unlike its competitors including Amazon Echo Show, Facebook Portal and Lenovo Smart Display, Google Home Hub does not include a camera for video calls, citing customer privacy concerns. Google spent $11.9 million this week on new commercials for the device, with the small remaining portion of its advertising budget used for promotion of Google Home Mini.

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Meanwhile, Amazon was busy promoting its rival product – the Amazon Echo Show. Compared to Google, Amazon didn’t invest quite as much on advertising the device, using only $5 million to promote the product in national TV spots, with the remaining TV budget divided among the Echo Dot, Echo Spot and Amazon Web Services. The first iteration of Echo Show launched in 2017, with the second generation of the product recently released in September of this year. The Echo Show is designed around Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa and features a touchscreen display that can be used to show visual information along with its responses, as well as play video and conduct video calls.

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This data is part of ongoing reporting we release on a weekly basis. Make sure to check back every week for the most recent data, or contact us to learn how you can discover your competitors’ breaking ads on your own in real–time using our AdScope tool. Already an AdScope customer? Log in now and see what your competitors are up to.